Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday March 27, 2012 @11:06AM
from the rick-someone-I-think-he-said dept.

sciencehabit writes "The massive oil spill that inundated the Gulf of Mexico in the spring and summer of 2010 severely damaged deep-sea corals more than 11 kilometers from the well site, a sea-floor survey conducted within weeks of the spill reveals. At one site, which hadn't been visited before but had been right in the path of a submerged 100-meter-thick oil plume from the spill, researchers found a variety of corals — most of them belonging to a type of colonial coral commonly known as sea fans — on a 10-meter-by-12-meter outcrop of rock. Many of the corals were partially or completely covered with a brown, fluffy substance that one team member variously calls 'frothy gunk,' 'goop,' and 'snot.'"

The beauty of nature destroyed because people value business and cheap energy above all else.

I once heard an interview of an ex-oil comany executive. He was asked what he would do to lower our dependance on oil He replied that eliminating the internal combustion engine. Cars and other things dependant on the internal combustion engine use about 40% of the oil use by this country.

The beauty of nature destroyed because people value business and cheap energy above all else.

So what? Business and cheap energy are pretty damn valuable which is why we invest so heavily in them. Beauty of nature? Not so much, but it gets a lot of investment anyway. I see no issue with the priorities of modern society.

needs to be eliminated not only for energy policy, but also for air quality and other environmental reasons.

Your point about different preferences for different people is well taken, but "I honor peoples' individual choices as long as they don't harm others" is off-topic. In this case, the choices by the oil industry ARE harming others. A lot of people in fact. Residents of the gulf of Mexico obviously very directly, the rest of the world through global warming, smog, and asthma indirectly (though the oil industry is of course only part of the issue.)

I'd rather drill on land. So we can monitor it easily and if there is any spill, it is easy to contain, seal, and clean up. But environmentalists have a fit if you say "ANWR"
,
So oil drilling is pushed off shore. But it is too close to the shore! Environmentalists don't like those oil rigs! Move them farther out!

So we push the limit on how far we can push the oil rigs out... and when they are in an area very hard monitor, very hard to contain, very hard to seal, and very hard to clean up... the environmentalists have a fit that it isn't cleaned up fast enough.

Let the oil companies drill on land. Open up the oil we have on land where it is safer, cleaner, and can be better monitored. That is much better than trusting some other government to monitor (we will never hear about any spills), or having it in an area that an accident could cause massive damage. Plus we can transport oil by pipeline (burning no fossil fuels). That would be much better than a fleet of oil tankers (we all know how environmentally friendly those things are...)

Yep. Fracking demonstrates that absolutely no problem can result from drilling on land. There is no water underground that can be contaminated, and even if there were, it's not as though anyone relies on that filthy ground water to survive! Drill, baby, drill! Government is bad! BP is good!

Or better yet, convert the country over to renewable alternative fuels, such as solar, hydro, geothermal, wind, etc. Subsidize electric cars instead of oil companies so that the power is generated at scale in power plants instead of hideously inefficiently inside relatively hideously inefficient internal combustion engines.

You'd kill two birds with one stone. Most of these power generation technologies are much cleaner, so you don't have to worry about things like oil spills. Also, you'd permanently sever our parasitic and detrimental dependence on the Middle East and other oil-producing countries that do not have our best interest in mind. And it's better for us as well--imagine never having to go to a gas station to "fill up" again, and paying less than 25% for the energy equivalency of gasoline.

Well sadly enough the same people that bemoan use of fossil fuels the loudest are also often the biggest obstacle to alternatives. No dams, think of the fish! No solar arrays, think of the horned toads and gila monsters you will displace! No wind farms, chopped birds are bad! No nuclear, radiation is the devil's work! For every proposal they either have a list of reasons why it can't happen or a list of restrictions that make it damn near impossible. They always seem to want a perfect solution. News flash! There is none. If you want to get off fossil fuels, you need to learn to compromise. I don't think that word exists in America anymore. "We the people" is more like "Me the people" these days...

We didn't listen to those people during the last 25 years of fossil fuel burning, so why do we need to listen to them now? There will always be fundamentalists at both ends of the spectrum, that doesn't mean the rest of us can't recognise a need to move away from fossil fuel burning and towards cleaner alternatives as a good thing and accept some compromises. It's just a shame big oil's lobbyists prevented us doing so much earlier.

well that's the problem isn't it? The people in the middle that are willing to compromise are NOT the ones with the ear of the politicians they elected. It's the lobbies with the money yelling loudly in one ear, and the activists dropping PR bombs in the other ear.

Well sadly enough the same people that bemoan use of fossil fuels the loudest are also often the biggest obstacle to alternatives. No dams, think of the fish! No solar arrays, think of the horned toads and gila monsters you will displace! No wind farms, chopped birds are bad! No nuclear, radiation is the devil's work! For every proposal they either have a list of reasons why it can't happen or a list of restrictions that make it damn near impossible. They always seem to want a perfect solution. News flash! There is none. If you want to get off fossil fuels, you need to learn to compromise. I don't think that word exists in America anymore. "We the people" is more like "Me the people" these days...

Wow, straw man much? The case to be made against those projects is not "think of the fish" or "radiation is the devils work", it's "recognize the externality". It just so happens that it's a little harder to ignore a million missing salmon or some nuclear fallout than it is to ignore the science behind climate change.

External costs, go read an economics textbook and stop making every argument about how you wish *other people* would be open to compromise. It comes off a tad hypocritical.

The problem is not with recognizing the externality, it's that once it's been recognized then frequently that's it. No more talking, no more solutions, just endless study and regulation. You can't damn this river unless you can PROVE that no salmon will ever die in a thousand years due to your dam. And you know what happens? Either the project gets scrapped because it's unprovable, or some genius comes up with a billion dollar solution that no one can afford and we all keep burning coal. What the environmental side is saying is that the cost of business as usual is more acceptable than potential damage to the environment. Then they say business as usual is unacceptable. You can't have it all your way and may have to choose the lesser of two evils.

hypocritical? I do what i can within my means. I have an energy efficient house and appliances. I drive energy efficient cars even if i can afford a sporty gas guzzler. I recycle, maybe not as much as I could, but i make the effort. I make compromises in my own life that benefit the environment. What I don't do is bitch about the way things are then stand in the way of them changing.

Damn that river straight to hell! Seriously, your point about hydro dams is kind of worthless since hydro projects have obviously been executed with great success and minimal effective backlash, all across the US. Salmon is important (and tasty) but your assertion that endangered salmon is stopping big hydro is baseless (there are many ways for hydro projects to be nature-neutral). The big thing stopping more hydro projects is the fact that river-adjacent land in the US is pretty much already occupied by

since hydro projects have obviously been executed with great success and minimal effective backlash, all across the US.

Except for the Tellico Dam, which was delayed for years by environmental concerns.

Tellico was eventually (after six years of delay, a Supreme Court hearing, and a special law written just to allow it to operate) allowed to begin operating, in spite of most of the Democrats in the Senate.

I guess you never considered that alternative fuels don't make good tooth brushes, Laptop Chassis, or the cable insulation that is on the wires inside your computer all of which are made from petroleum.

While I do not disagree with alternative fuels, as my car runs on biodiesel from waist oil, don't think that we can get completely away from petroleum products at this time. A majority of plastics and polymers come form these oil sites.

If you want the electric cars charging at home, you better push for more

I didn't say we'd be petroleum-free; we'll be petroleum-independent. The vast majority of our oil is used for energy production, plain and simple.

And we don't need to put wind turbines in every neighborhood. What we need is a combination of approaches, all tailored for the region they're serving. And yes, we very likely would need to rely on things like coal and natural gas for a while as other renewable technologies ramp up. Still, it would be much, much better to generate the power at one central loca

Alternative fuels will have their day. But that day isn't today just quite yet. The Chevy Volt has been taken off of production because: It costs too much (even with subsidizes) and doesn't offer enough (35 mil range?).

I'm all for cutting subsidizes to oil companies. They are profitable enough to support themselves. And when Alternative fuels become cheaper than fossil fuels, I'll be the first on the block to switch over. The market wants cheap fuel. Offer me more for less and I'm one happy camper.

Sounds great point me to the technology that provides this miracle you speak of? There is no doubt we have to move to some other resource the question is what will it be? On top of this issue is how to do it while keeping our economy intact.

Electric cars of today are not the solution. What you are essentially doing is converting heat energy by burning fossil fuels (coal, natural gas etc) to another medium with poor storage potential (electricity).

Wow, so the fact that just about everything in the world except cars right now runs on electricity, I guess that makes for an awful lot of stupidity out there.

And maybe you've been hiding under a rock lately, but the electric cars today are pretty damn good. Yes, even the Chevy Volt that some idiots keep talking about as if it's already doomed. They're a bit on the pricey side right now, but that's because some of the technology is still relatively new and they don't have the volume that cars with ICEs ha

Nice rant but a few simple math calculations prove just how stupid purchasing a vehicle like the volt is. In fact you might as well take 10k dollars and put a match to it.

Tesla S, sure it is a cool gadget. Does it beat the crap out of a ICE engine, nope not by a long shot. I will fill up a yaris, you fill up your tesla and we race go as fast as you want I still win. Not only do I win but do it at a 10/th of the cost.

If you had actually followed the link above, you would see that the Telsa Model S (the sedan, not the $100k+ Roadster) does 0-60 in 6.5 seconds, and that's the base

So will a Yaris beat a Tesla Model S? In a long-distance race, if a top of the line Yaris is competing against a Model S or you've done some expensive modifications to the Yaris, it theoretically can, but if you take the average Yaris on the road, I don't think so. You're sure as hell not g

And we are going to use what to ship your load of gadgets from china to your doorstep?

That model S if 50 grand and that is after the taxpayers in this country pay 7 of it. So if I went out and bought a nice car for 20 grand saving 30 grand for fuel. Not including maintenance 30 grand in fuel even at 5 bucks per gallon in a poor milage care will net you over 150,000 miles. I did not even account for the charge electricity we will assume all that coal burned to produce it was free. Now of course by then all o

...And Slashdot has seen fit to munge my post. I'll just leave it at, if you think that simple math calculations prove how stupid purchasing a vehicle like the Volt is, then you need a new calculator. Look up the info yourself next time instead of just reading Republican talking points.

Let the oil companies drill on land. Open up the oil we have on land where it is safer, cleaner, and can be better monitored

To what purpose? Oil companies are already drilling on land. The untapped sources we have are not going to affect the price of gas at the pump or significantly prolong our ability to rely on oil.

Plus we can transport oil by pipeline (burning no fossil fuels).

That depends entirely on what is powering the pumps. Which in the case of the Alaskan pipeline's 11 pump stations is natural gas or liquid fuel. What, you didn't think the oil just flowed "downhill" all the way from Alaska did you?

I'd rather drill on land. So we can monitor it easily and if there is any spill, it is easy to contain, seal, and clean up.

You don't get it. The problems with BP start way before [truth-out.org] the disaster in the Gulf. They have a history of egregious safety violations which have killed people before. They trade high-risk safety practices for profit. I understand you don't like environmentalists; anyone with extreme viewpoints can be frustrating to deal with, but do not lose sight of why the DH disaster was so damaging. Even if BP is "drilling on land" they cannot be trusted to do so safely and they've demonstrated it for years prior to

I'd rather drill on land. So we can monitor it easily and if there is any spill, it is easy to contain, seal, and clean up. But environmentalists have a fit if you say "ANWR"

Bit of a false dichotomy there. You can drill on land elsewhere other than ANWR. There's so little oil there compared to what we're using that it's not worth it.

And on that point, we need to stop using so much oil. Why are we subsidizing gasoline for private civilian transport again? Obviously it would be bad to suddenly raise gas prices across the board, killing the trucking industry and causing us all to starve, but why are tax dollars being used to make gas half the price it is in Europe for the g

Given how much oil leaked I don't see this as a great shock. There's probably some legitimate technical interest in exactly how far the oil spreads and how it does damage, but to an outside observer it seems like a foregone conclusion that a massive oil spill will probably do bad things to the area.

and the dispersants that are dumped that cause the oil to sink prevents any natural survival from occuring. There were plenty of these chemicals sprayed, not because tehy are good for long term issues, but because they help PR when less oil is visible on the surface or beaches.

and the dispersants that are dumped that cause the oil to sink prevents any natural survival from occuring.

Except that we have deep sea corals (the worst effected of the group that the researchers had looked at so far) 11 km from the blow out naturally surviving the unsurvivable for almost a couple of years.

We may have more than just a PR trick, but a legitimate way to reduce the harm from large oil spills.

I hope so. The dispersants used after the Valdez spill turned a formerly thriving sea floor into nothing but sand and tar. the tarballs stayed there, bound to the chemicals that were preventing a natural version of the cleanup. I hope the 11km in this case is under the plume, and not some less-impacted location even though it is relatively close to the leak.

How bad the "bad things" are is more than just a technical issue, but also matter to what decisions we make. This coral is not particularly far away and parts of it are still alive, surviving a couple of years near the worst oil spill in history. It helps confirm that large oil spills are bad, but that the worst case predictions at the time of the spill missed the mark for some reason. Perhaps it's conditions unique to the Gulf or the methods used to contain the spill and mitigate its consequences.

Right, all legitimate technically interesting issues. But a range of 11Km, 10, 12, or something else means absolutely nothing to a non expert out of context. Did scientists predict 10 and got 11? Or did they predict 100 and got 11 or...? It's all science but reporting on science as though they've either discovered something particularly interesting (which they haven't) isn't going to do the discipline any favours. This is an article that broadly explains that research is being done on an area but nothi

No, instead, everybody with a fishing boat will continue to blame the NOAA for every single last thing that happens to the fishing industry, including the results of overfishing.

If NOAA enforces fishing less, they're purposefully trying to ruin the industry in some kind of unfathomable conspiracy with the government and the oil companies and blah blah blah.

If NOAA allows for fishing, they're not protecting the ocean's wildlife enough and the smaller boats don't stand a chance to haul anything in when the bigger purse-sein boats are stealing it all, blah blah blah.

In all the time I've spent debating with fishermen, usually at Jane Lubchenco's Facebook, since the Deepwater spill, I've never seen one fisherman write that perhaps it's a good idea to try to preserve the industry by fishing less.

I think for most fishermen it's either

a) a foregone conclusion that all the fish will be fished to extinction so why dare to hold them back from making their livelihoodb) a foregone conclusion that it's impossible to seriously deplete fish stock from the world's "fisheries" so holding fishing back is conspiracy

blah blah blah blah

The thing is they talk about it like they have some kind of thriving business going when I'm sure if I had been there in the various meeting places where they go to argue with, heckle, and defame NOAA authorities over the years, I would probably have heard fishermen blaming every one but themselves for their decreasing livelihood.

I have a friend who used to live in Cape Breton, Newfoundland, and he told me stories of how fishing boats would rather dump their whole catch in the harbour if they weren't offered the price they wanted for their fish. It was pretty sickening to listen to, and he really didn't want to be associated with that mindset. When it wasn't fishing season, many fisherman just sat on unemployment insurance for the rest of the year. When most of the cod stocks collapsed from overfishing*, they lobbied for government

Just MAYBE the GOVERNMENT shouldn't have created the false sense of security - the moral hazard, by providing the companies in question with 'insurance' against such accidents, especially in the form of liability caps (what was it, 75 Million per accident?)

And then MAYBE the GOVERNMENT shouldn't have used its power to prevent shallow water drilling with regulations.

From what I've read it was the dispersant chemicals (frothy gunk) that caused most of the damage. The oil by itself would have eventually been eaten by bacteria, and recycled back into the ecosystem (as happens with all dead plant matter).

From what I've read it was the dispersant chemicals (frothy gunk) that caused most of the damage. The oil by itself would have eventually been eaten by bacteria, and recycled back into the ecosystem (as happens with all dead plant matter).

From what I've read it was the dispersant chemicals (frothy gunk) that caused most of the damage.

From this article: "Samples of the material contained mucus secreted by the corals—a sign the colonies had recently been under stress—as well as fragments of dead coral polyps, saturated and unsaturated fatty acids commonly found in biological tissues such as cell membranes, and a mélange of petroleum residues."

Well the dispersant dispersed the oil and caused it to sink, which on its own could heavily damage ocean ecosystems like these corals. The ecological impact of the dispersant itself is largely unknown I think.

What the dispersant did do is keep large amounts of oil from hitting the gulf coast, which aside from being better for BP PR was also a good thing for sensitive coastline environments.

Which was ultimately the better choice I don't know. It's not like either choice is good. Maybe the worst part about

This was literally a cover up. Dump toxic chemicals on top of the oil slick, so it would sink, thus avoiding the PR disaster that came with a beach landing of oil slicks.
So they traded the beach for the sea floor, and most Americans promptly went back to bed, or down to the beach to let their kids swim.

The fact is that the most important and fragile part of the ocean biosphere is the surface and the tidal marshes. It s where most of the life is, and the most important, complex, slow to recover and fragile life at that. Regardless of what you think the motivation was, dispersing oil through the water column vs letting it all rise to the surface was the right thing to do to minimize the damage.

The surface and tidal marshes may be the most visible to us humans on land, but that's not the most critical part of our oceans and seas. The deep water is where the oceans and seas "live", and destroying this habitat will have far greater consequences for our race. Well over 90% of the ocean's species live in deeper water, well out of sight of humans. Sure, it's nice to have pretty beaches, but if we continue to destroy the living, deep seas, we are slitting our own throats.

First, it's not like you solicited him for your queer "man on dog" sex.Second- like that clown could win the batshit party nomination, let alone the presidency and get protection.Third- he doesn't believe in using protection anyway.

It's unclear from the article, but is this actually the fault of OIL (which, as I understand, naturally seeps quite frequently from the Gulf floor) or is it more an issue with the dispersants applied to push the oil down into the water column? To me, that seems more a likely culprit than the oil alone.

"In almost half of the 43 corals studied at the site, the majority of animals had died or were showing signs of stress, the researchers say. And in more than one-quarter of the corals, more than 90% of the an

A coral is a colony of many small polyps, sometimes living in symbiosis, or parasitosis with algae (Zooanthelae), which provide an additional energy source for the colony.

If the algae are expelled, the coral loses its color, and is said to be "bleached".

So, in almost half of the corals, a majority of the polyps died, or showed signs of severe stress. In a quarter of the corals, 90% of the polyps died. or showed signs of severe stress.

(Imagine you're a researcher examining the course of a smallpox epidemic several hundred years ago. The death records are grouped by parishes. Since most people did not often travel from village to village, but stuck to their local communities, it makes sense to talk about parishes in which "a majority" of the inhabitants died, and parishes in which "most" of the people died, and so on. In this case, the coral is the village; the polyp is the individual vilager.)

I do understand mendacious presentations, however. This happens when a major result and a minor result are conflated, usually implying that the major result wasn't impressive enough and needs to be 'buffed'.

Note, for example, in your recap, you stated "a majority of the polyps died or showed severe stress" - either you were being tendentious, or you fell for one of the oldest rhetorical trick in the book. As the article stated: "...In almost half of the 43 corals studied at the site,

What I never hear about is what the experience is longer term with these spills is. In world war 2, many oil tankers and other ships were sunk with huge amounts of all types of fuel from heavy bunker oil to aviation gasoline. What is the effect at these sites 70 years later? Should be easy to go see.

Why is it that this entire thread has been riddled with "Santorum" comments, yet only a couple people seem to have wanted to start any sort of informed discussion about this issue?

Sure, Americans DID go back to bed after the BP disaster (to quote another/.'er) but this disaster is still the reason I think twice before eating shrimp in the U.S. It's an environmental disaster of epic proportions, and we've just let it ride.... even on Slashdot? I remember reading article after article, the outrage and hope that big oil would finally get it's comeuppance... and now nothing?

Also, if any of you people are paid to troll this thread with nonsense (and I know someone in marketing who says this is more likely than you might think), then shame on you.

...trolling also happens when you promote christian versions of sharia law in a free country and then arrogantly run for the highest office in the land. Trolls beget trolls. That's what's interesting. FTFY

Well, I respect someone that at least puts some work in. But those aren't examples of "Christian sharia" (unless 90% of that is about preventing same sex marriages from being legally recognized, which would make it vastly smaller in scale and significance than true sharia). Sure you show that Santorum does campaign on a somewhat dubious moral platform, but it doesn't measure up to your overblown rhetoric.

I don't have a problem with splitting the Republican party. I think four or five viable national-level parties would be better for the US. Only problem is that the "first past the post" system favors two parties.